This last weekend we had a birthday party for my youngest son. It was a pool party at our local pool and it was so much fun.
He chose the theme for his party back in June. He wanted a Wall-E party! He saw these cool Wall-E cakes at the bakery in the Wal-mart we were at in Texas and he wanted me to buy one of them THEN (in June) so he could be sure to have a Wall-E party. I didn’t get one then, needless to say, but I did find some Wall-E decorations at our local Michael’s Craft store in October so I picked them up then to be sure to have them.
After an hour in the pool, the kiddos came to the party room for some party fun. I had everything planned with the Wall-E theme in mind.
First on the table was a fun centerpiece:
an african violet plant in one of my boots (african violet ‘cuz my son loves purple, and the boot ‘cuz it reminded us all of the Wall-E movie where Wall-E puts the plant he finds into a boot). I had also found a big mylar balloon with Wall-E and Eve on it at our Safeway here in town, so it was tied to the boot as well. My son told me yesterday how cool he thought that was. He said, “Mom, that was a very fun thing you did putting the plant in your boot. I loved it!”
There were coloring pages with various scenes from the movie, Wall-E, for all the kiddos to color. I found them, along with some activity pages (dot-to-dot, spot the differences, etc.) by doing a simple Google search for Wall-E coloring pages.
At one of our dollar stores here, I also found some “Magic Cubes” (cheap imitation of the Rubick’s Cube that Wall-E plays with in the movie) and had those out on the table for the kids to fiddle with. None of them knew what they were called, but they sure liked playing with them!
Also online I was able to find some Wall-E glasses to print out and assemble. So, everyone donned their funky Wall-E glasses (and my daughter got an Eve mask to wear) and they looked so fun. More fun, maybe, were the sounds they all decided to make, trying to sound like Wall-E!
For a quick ‘good-for-us’ kind of snack, we had Triscit crackers with cheese slices – they kind of looked like the little cubes that Wall-E processes with the junk on Earth – and juice boxes.
We went around the table sharing our favorite parts of the Wall-E movie – thankfully everyone had seen it and had some very fun things to share.
We also broke out the glow-in-the-dark bracelets. It wasn’t dark in the party room but the idea that space is dark wasn’t lost on the kiddos. Everyone got a glow-bracelet and most of them crawled under the table to see them really glow!
After that the kiddos all got to try somethiing they had never tried before – Twinkies! None of the children there had ever eaten a Twinkie before. The connection to the movie is that Wall-E’s little cockroach friend sleeps in a Twinkie at night. It goes back to that urban legend that if, for one reason or another, everything else was to be destroyed on earth, cockroaches and Twinkies would still survive! Anyway, the Twinkies were a hit!
Then it was time for presents, and my son’s friends sure brought some fun things for him. He was SO excited!
Next we sang Happy Birthday to the birthday boy in English and in French (he is in French Immersion at school and all but 2 of his guests are in his class with him) and presented him with a cupcake and a Wall-E candle (the candle was bigger than the cupcake!). Then everyone got to have a cupcake, and each cupcake had a Wall-E liner and a tiny Wall-E figure for them to keep.
After the cupcakes were devoured, we all got to do a special thing – we planted our own seeds! Ahead of time I had made little peat pots with soil in them. All the children had to do was make a hole in the soil with a pencil, and drop some seeds into the hole, then cover it back up again. We planted pansy seeds – my hope is that they are pretty hardy plants so hopefully they will at least sprout and grow a little. They each got to take home their own plant.
In the party room there was also an air hockey table which the boys all enjoyed having turn playing – and it was the last thing they did right before the parents came to get them.
On their way out, we made sure they had their Wall-E glasses and cupcake topper, their plant (with a tiny sheet of instructions about how to hopefully not kill it), and a goody bag. I filled the goody bags with things that reminded us of the Wall-E movie. Things like a paddle ball, a ring pop – lolipop ring (like the ring Wall-E discovered in the movie only to discard in favor of keeping the box it was in), a sparkly pencil with a star-shaped eraser, and some outer space stickers.
Everyone had a really good time, and my son was very pleased with his Wall-E party. He and his sibings have been wearing their Wall-E glasses and Eve mask and playing Wall-E for the last 4 days. And we’ve all been going nuts trying to figure out the Rubick’s cubes (I have been SO close SO many times only to do something to really mess it up again).
I love celebrating birthdays at our house, and having fun themes like this one really makes it easy. These special moments and memories make it all worthwhile!
“It only takes a moment to be loved a whole life long!” (Hello Dolly lyrics from the movie Wall-E)
